Showing results by narrator "David Thorpe" in All Categories

In 2016, six students and a dog on a barge trip entered Standedge Tunnel, the longest canal tunnel in England. Six students went in, and two and a half hours later, the boat reappeared on the other side with only one of the students, unconscious, and the dog. The case of the Standedge Six was largely kept from the national media. The police investigation concluded that the only remaining student, Matthew, killed his friends, hid the bodies on the boat and returned later to move them to an undisclosed location. Matthew is in prison...but he maintains he is innocent.

July 1794, and the streets of London are filled with rumours of revolution. Laurence Jago - clerk to the Foreign Office - is ever more reliant on the Black Drop to ease his nightmares. A highly sensitive letter has been leaked to the press, and Laurence is a suspect. Then, he discovers the body of a fellow clerk, supposedly a suicide. Blame for the leak is shifted to the dead man, but Laurence is certain both of his friend's innocence and that he was murdered.

An Englishman in Bombay strikes up a friendship with postcard-seller Baburao Munshi, after allowing him credit to sell a selection of books from his office. As Baburao’s bookselling success grows, so does the two men’s friendship. Yet when Baburao’s son is old enough to be involved in the business, so begins a war of attrition between father and son.

What is it like to broadcast the fateful words "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday," then jump into the unknown? The members of one of the world's most unusual brotherhoods provide the answers in this incredible book. Formed during the Second World War to celebrate the survival of pilots who had been forced to bail out over water, the Goldfish Club has taken on new members ever since. They share one pivotal moment, but their experiences beyond this couldn't be more different.

1564, Lisbon. The Inquisition displays its power and ruthlessly spreads fear. Heretics are tortured and burned. Isabela, daughter of the Falconer at the Royal Court, is about to be caught in the Church’s terrifying schemes. The slaughter of two of the King’s precious white falcons sees her father arrested and imprisoned. He and his family will be killed unless the birds are replaced. Isabela decides only she can save her father. These birds are impossibly rare, and she will have to travel far to strange lands to find them.

It is deep midwinter. Six ambitious vice presidents of Labouchere Associates are gathered together at an isolated mountain lodge in New Hampshire’s White Mountains for a weekend of corporate mind games. By Monday, one of them will become a partner and earn at least a million a year. And one of them will be dead.

Rome has lost its greatest warrior; Aulus Cornelius is dead. Although he is hailed as a hero, the betrayal by cowardly governor Flaminus is not forgotten. Aulus' death has left his sons with grave responsibilities. While Titus swears vengeance against Flaminus, and to become as great a general as his father, Quintus chooses to pursue politics - under the guidance of Lucius Falerius, now the most powerful senator in Rome. Despite his fortune, Lucius is haunted by the prophecy that binds his fate to Aulus'. As he trains his son, Marcellus, he manipulates the Cornelius family to his own ends.

Best-selling crime author Joseph Newton is on board a train when he meets a man fascinated by the idea of a murder so perfectly simple it would be impossible to solve. Critical of the elaborate plots in Newton’s novels, the man is keen to demonstrate to the author just how he would carry out the seemingly undetectable crime.

Though it remains by far the world's most famous mountain, in recent years, Everest's reputation has changed radically, with long queues of climbers on the Lhotse Face, lurid tales of frozen corpses and piles of high altitude trash. It wasn't always like this though. Once Everest was remote and inaccessible, a mysterious place, where only the bravest and most heroic dared to tread. The first attempt on Everest in 1922 by George Leigh Mallory and a British team is an extraordinary story full of controversy, drama and incident, populated by a set of larger-than-life characters.

The Steampunk Pirates jump at the chance to earn a handsome reward in return for doing some snooping. But when they find themselves sandwiched between the Dread Captain Inky beard and a spider on the attack, it's time to beat a retreat. Can they escape without a scrape, or have the robotic rebels ticked their last?

John Tradescant the Younger has inherited his father’s unique collection of plants along with his unerring ability to nurture them. But as gardener to Charles I, he confronts an unbearable dilemma when England descends into Civil War. Fleeing from the chaos, John travels to the Royalist colony of Virginia in America. But the virgin land is not uninhabited. John’s plant hunting brings him to live with the native people, and he learns to love and respect their way of life just as it is threatened by the colonial settlers.

It is 2002 and Private Investigator Makana is shaken out of his grief when a routine surveillance job leads him to the horrific murder of a teenage girl. In a country where honour killings are commonplace and the authorities turn a blind eye, Makana determines to track down the perpetrator. Seeking answers in the dead girl’s past he travels to Siwa, where an old enemy lurks in the shadows. Makana discovers that the truth can be as deadly and as changeable as the desert beneath his feet.

Written in 1881, ‘Winthrop’s Adventure’ is Vernon Lee’s first ghost story. Set in Florence, the story regales the story of young painter Julian Winthrop who becomes transfixed by a piece of music. He traces this haunting back to one of his previous paintings.

Ernest Roydon is distressed by a mysterious apparition that appears around his house. What he initially thinks is a trick of the light soon starts taking on a more human form, until he’s too scared to stay in the house on his own and must enlist the help of a friend.

Hester Ward is blessed with youth, health, beauty, a husband and two adorable children, but she is being tormented by a face in her dreams. It is hoped that a holiday by the coast will relieve her, but the face eventually manifests itself.

In Praise of Famous Horses is an A-Z companion to perhaps the most loved of all domesticated animals. The book's entries include a wealth of unexpected, fascinating and serendipitous information, from horse-slang phrases to horses in British pub signs and from the horse in advertising to the horse as a food item. Themes such as the horse in warfare and the horse in folklore abound.

This audiobook stinks! Hold your nose while you find out absolutely everything you never knew about poo! Did you know that.... A week's worth of elephant poo weighs as much a 25 people? A lifetime of farts would fill 2,000 balloons? The world uses enough loo paper in an hour to wrap around the Earth 14 times? This irresistibly disgusting audiobook for children will teach you all you need to know about all kinds of animal dung and human waste - what it's for, how it's made, where it goes, and lots more!

The hero of Charlotte Brontë's first novel escapes a dreary clerkship in industrial Yorkshire by taking a job as a teacher in Belgium. There, however, his entanglement with the sensuous but manipulative Zoraide Reuter complicates his affections for a penniless girl who is both teacher and pupil in Reuter's school.

Meadowland gives a unique and intimate account of an English meadow’s life from January to December, together with its biography. In exquisite prose, John Lewis-Stempel records the passage of the seasons from cowslips in spring to the hay-cutting of summer and grazing in autumn, and includes the biographies of the animals that inhabit the grass and the soil beneath: the badger clan, the fox family, the rabbit warren, the skylark brood and the curlew pair, among others.

'The Editor of Wisden is an important personage. It is he who decides the policy of the Cricketers’ Bible and cricketers the world over look to him to give a lead on all controversial problems. His is, therefore, no easy task, but Wisden has been fortunate in its editors.' That was written in 1933, and it is still true. The heart of the Almanack is the section entitled "Notes by the Editor". The editor's opinions can change careers, laws - indeed every part of the game.